The character sheet for the AMC American Dark Comedy, Kevin Can F**k Himself.

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Characters

The McRoberts Family

Allison

Allison McRoberts (née Devine)

Portrayed by: Annie Murphy

On the surface, Allison appears to be the quintessential wife who dotes on her husband and supports his endeavors. Beneath the surface, she is a deeply unhappy and abused woman who has become disillusioned with catering to her buffoonish husband's whims and wants out of his sitcom world.

All Take and No Give: Allison is both a giver and a taker depending on her relationship with the individual. She's the giver to Kevin's taker and occasionally a taker in her relationship with Patty.
Ambiguously Bi: When Allison argues with Patty during the season finale, she mentions how important she is to her and struggles to find the proper term for their relationship. The two later hold hands after Patty saves Allison from getting strangled by Neil.
Bad Liar: Although, luckily for her career as a would-be murderer, most people consider her too Beneath Notice to put the pieces together.
Beware the Nice Ones: No one would believe her to be capable of the spousal murder she's planning to carry out.
Butt-Monkey: Things never go right with Allison, who never gets anything she wants, especially when Kevin interferes. Deconstructed, as this isn't played for straight laughs — it's clearly harming her mental health, to the point that she wants to procure illegal narcotics in order to commit murder.
Cannot Spit It Out: At a critical moment in the Season 1 finale, Allison tries to articulate her feelings towards Patty, but can't manage to put them into words. Eventually, Patty loses patience and leaves.
Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Her attempt to get back at Kevin by swiping the sports jersey he ordered leads to Kevin declaring "war" on their new next-door neighbors. She's not even allowed to snark at all without Kevin and his friends telling her to not even try to be funny.
The Chew Toy: She takes the brunt of the physical comedy on both sides of the story for the audience's amusement.
Cloud Cuckoolander: Downplayed compared to the rest of the cast but she does have her moments, due to being out of her depth in her plan to kill Kevin. For instance, her plan of getting Marcus, the cat-calling mechanic who she punched, to help her get drugs? Apologize with homemade oatmeal raisin cookies.
Did Not Think This Through: Her initial plan to murder Kevin (drug his food with Oxycodone to make it look like he had an overdose) is incredibly short-sighted. Patty has to spell out for her the multiple ways it could go south and Allison ultimately concedes that she needs a better plan.
Faking the Dead: In the second season premiere, after her attempts to kill Kevin don't work out, she decides to try to fake her own death instead.
Freudian Excuse: She's planning a murder and does some very morally questionable things, but given what a toxic scumbag Kevin is and the abuse she's dealt with from him, it's more than understandable.
- It's also revealed that her mother was emotionally abusive to her as well, so it's not hard to see how Allison wound up with Kevin if she was really desperate to get away from that.
Good Girl Gone Bad: From the moment she discovers that Kevin drained their savings account, which causes her to go on a drug-fueled bender that ends with her making up her mind to kill him.
Grew a Spine: It's a gradual process, but Allison does learn to stand up for herself more. It culminates in her telling Kevin she hates him, is divorcing him, and nothing he says or does will change her mind.
Guilt Complex: As Sam points out to her and to which she accepts, she's really in a situation of her own making. She never pushed Kevin to go further in his career and didn't even bother to check their bank account until recently, which limits her options in terms of her financial future. Allison's guilt for letting things get so bad contributes to her hitting the Despair Event Horizon in "Broken".
I Just Want to Have Friends: Allison is not only desperately lonely with all of her social circle belonging to Kevin but any attempts to expand and grow are sabotaged by Kevin because he can't handle her having any agency of her own whatsoever.
Informed Flaw: In-universe, Allison is constantly told not to make jokes because she isn't funny. However, she’s actually witty with a few zingers, it's just that it either goes over the others' heads or Kevin finds it threatening.
- In fact, Kevin seems to have a pattern of establishing such "flaws" for Allison — such as her being Money Dumb (which allows him to control her bank account) and a bad driver (giving him an excuse to hog the car) — in order to take advantage of her.
It's All About Me: For everything she endures over the course of the show, there are several moments where Allison reveals herself to be insensitive to other people's circumstances, such as not bothering to help Diane carry heavy boxes. She often rambles on to strangers and acquaintances about her life without bothering to inquire how they're doing or is only interested in getting what she can out of them, something Sam calls her out on in "New Tricks". It's ambiguous as to whether this is an innate part of her personality or just an outgrowth of being unhappy and isolated for so long to the point that she's unable to really focus on anything else.
Limited Social Circle: She has no friends of her own, and none of Kevin's friends seem to care about her one way or another. The closest she has is her old coworker Sam, who she's only just recently started talking to again, and her aunt Diane. Patty eventually becomes a genuine friend to her later on as well.
Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Her plans to kill or humiliate Kevin usually end up making his life better.
- After she steals his hoodie, she goes outside to try to get drugs for Kevin to overdose on. Kevin catches her leaving the house on a security tape, believing she’s the neighbor he's feuding with. This leads him to pretend his house was robbed to commit insurance fraud and get more money.
- Later, she hires Nick to break into their house to kill Kevin. Kevin, who found the gun Allison had buried in the backyard, ends up shooting him. While it initially breaks his spirit, he's soon hailed as a hero for shooting a major drug dealer (who is only seen as such because Allison and Patty plant evidence at Nick's house to take suspicion off Patty) and starts to run for city council.
- In "Mrs. McRoberts is Dead", knowing that his being elected to public office would likely make it impossible for her either to kill or escape him, she persuades him to run a campaign ad showing off his Manchild personality. This successfully torpedoes his political career, but in the process makes him into a local celebrity as the "Worcester Wild Dude".
No Sympathy: No one seems to care what Allison is going through in her life. While wearing an oversized jersey she swiped from Kevin, Diane approaches her and tells her not to let herself go in order to keep a "catch" like Kevin, without even hearing her reasons for wearing it. She gets even less sympathy from Kevin's friend Patty, at least initially.
Not So Above It All: She gradually reveals a manipulative, self-centered side that ratchets up over time and often fails to pay attention to the needs of others, just like Kevin. It becomes most blatant when Patty lays out the flaws of her initial murder plan, which is just as short-sighted and ignorant of the effects it could have on others as a classic Kevin Zany Scheme.
Only Sane Woman: Subverted due to her increasing Sanity Slippage. This is the comedic role she plays in relation to Kevin and his friends; when asked whose side she's on in an Escalating War with the neighbors Kevin believes stole his hoodie, she replies, "Sanity's." This isn't quite accurate, as she stole the hoodie herself.
Parenting the Husband: Kevin is barely functional without her around. It's also brutally Deconstructed and taken to dark extremes — Kevin's antics consume all of Allison's energy and time, as she has to constantly deal with the ramifications and keep things from getting out of control, which leaves her with no time for herself or friends of her own. The exhaustion and sense of isolation only further damages her mental health and deepens her hatred of Kevin, leading to her wanting him dead.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech:
- She is on the receiving end several times through the series, especially in "Fixed" where Sam chews her out for refusing to take responsibility for her life and Patty angrily chastises her for manipulating her into searching through Tammy's notebook.
- Allison herself gives a serious one to Patty in "Live Free or Die" for turning a blind eye to Kevin's destructive antics and treating the consequences like a joke. Patty herself is almost speechless and realizes that Allison is right.
Revenge Before Reason: In "New Tricks", she basically says the reason why she's planning on killing her husband rather than taking other actions is that "he deserves it". Her plans to kill Kevin also tend to take a lot of effort, backfire heavily, and make her life worse off.
Sanity Slippage: When the series begins, her treatment at Kevin's hands over ten years of marriage has begun to push her over the edge.
Stepford Smiler: Kevin believes that they're more or less Happily Married. If it weren't for the single-cam story, you might, too.
Sympathetic Adulterer: She cheats on Kevin with her new boss and high-school sweetheart Sam, but given what Kevin is like, you can't really blame her. Even Tammy, who personally dislikes Allison, doesn't blame her for cheating on her husband.
Team Mom: Her "one house rule" is "don't call me Mom" but the others see her in this light to the point where Neil, who sometimes addresses her as "Mom", chides her for playing favorites when she serves breakfast to her husband and not to everybody else who dropped in.
Took a Level in Badass: Through the second season, she becomes a lot more assertive and craftier, with some of her zingers even managing to disarm Kevin.
Tragic Dream: She has apparently been getting by on the hope of moving out of Worcester and into a less rundown house for many years, completely unaware that Kevin drained their savings account a long time ago.
Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Fitting with the sitcom deconstruction, Allison is generally much more attractive than her shlubby husband Kevin even when she's looking worse for wear.
Unkempt Beauty: Generally has a ragged appearance with cheap make-up, drab clothing, and slightly disheveled hair ... but, thanks to being played by Annie Murphy, she still looks pretty.
Unknown Rival: She is this towards Jenn, as she clearly despises Jenn for marrying Sam, but Jenn is oblivious and is friendly to Allison.
Villain Protagonist: Falls under this given she's trying to kill her husband, albeit she's A Lighter Shade of Black due to him being an obnoxious emotionally abusive narcissist. Downplayed, if not outright subverted, as she doesn't end up going through with it and looks for other means to get away from Kevin.

Kevin

Kevin McRoberts

^{Click here to see Kevin without his sitcom filter}

Portrayed by: Eric Petersen

A man who literally believes the world revolves around him and has a complete inability to empathize with other people, even those he claims to love most.

All Take and No Give: He's the epitome of this to Allison. He's essentially leeched away all agency from her to keep her dependent on him so he can have her care for him all the time, all the while caring nothing for what she wants or needs. He also treats Neil similarly, essentially using Neil (who's too oblivious to know better) as a guinea pig and a glorified lapdog.
Attention Whore: Kevin needs to be the center of attention at all times, and cares little about what others want. When he has a fight with Neil over cooking chili in "We're Selling Washing Machines", he latches onto Allison and expects her to do everything Neil did without question.
Asshole Victim: At best, Kevin is genuinely oblivious to the destructive effect his actions have on other people. At worst, he's a petty and mean-spirited bully whose goofy behavior is partly an act to get away with his more deliberately malicious actions, and he's repeatedly shown to not give a single crap about anyone else besides himself. Thus, it's really hard to feel sorry for Kevin in any way when everyone cuts ties with him and he accidentally kills himself while trying to burn Allison's personal belongings as revenge for leaving him in the Grand Finale.
Beard of Sorrow: Subverted. After Allison's "death", he grows one, but nothing changes about him at all. The only times he actually talks about his wife is when he tries to guilt trip others into doing things for him.
Beneath the Mask: He's still cruel and abusive in the sitcom filter, but it's played like a dumb goofball selfishly unaware of anyone's feelings. In the Grand Finale, where the filter is taken off, he knows full well what he's doing, and mocks Allison for wanting anything out of life, assuming she'll eventually come crawling back to him when she tells him she wants a divorce.
Beware the Silly Ones: Weaponized. In Season 2, he reveals to Sam that he’s aware that the things he does are horrible, but claims to be able to get away with them because he’s funny.
Big Bad: He is the overarching source of conflict within the show, as the narcissistic and abusive husband that has thoroughly broken Allison and who needs to be removed from her life, one way or the other.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Kevin spends most of the series giving off the image of a fun, party guy and seeming totally oblivious to how harmful his behavior is. It's eventually revealed in Season 2 that this is largely an act and he knows exactly how awful he is and simply doesn't care.
Born Lucky: While he might suffer his share of pain and humiliation along the way, things always ultimately turn out for the best for Kevin. Allison is increasingly driven crazy by just how much the entire universe seems to be conspiring to help him. Fortunately, as the series progresses he eventually pushes his luck too far; his "friends" all abandon him, and without Allison to keep him in check he quickly and accidentally kills himself in a fit of drunken rage.
Break the Haughty:
- Subverted. After shooting Nick before the first season finale, Kevin seems genuinely shaken and horrified by the real life-threatening situation he was in. He quickly finds a way to profit from the situation and stroke his own ego by running for city council, proving that he didn't learn a thing and merely felt threatened by the change in his status quo.
- Played straight in the Grand Finale when everyone has wised up to how terrible he is and cut him out of their lives, topped off with Allison telling him she hasn't loved him for years and wants to divorce him, reducing him into a pathetic and screaming wreck.
Brilliant, but Lazy: While "brilliant" is a stretch, the only times Kevin goes out of his way to help people are when he's affected in some way.
Bumbling Dad: Deconstructed. The series shows how miserable an experience it would be to be married to the classic "goofy, dimwitted husband" present in a lot of Dom Com shows. Notably, he has the attitude and makings of a Bumbling Dad, but lacks any of the usual sympathetic qualities and has no children because he fundamentally hates the idea of having to share attention with anyone else, even his own hypothetical child.
Child Hater: He's clearly not all that fond of kids; he doesn't want to ever be a dad (since he knows it'll take the attention off of himself) and the only time we see him interact with a kid, he steals a bunch his arcade game tickets for himself after his attempt to buy them are rebuffed. He does seem somewhat more open to the idea in "Broken", but only in his usual egotistical way of seeing his child as an extension of himself.
Control Freak: Kevin must have everything his way, at all times. Needing to be in control of everything has led to him gaslighting Allison about her being a poor driver to make sure he has the car all to himself, and to kicking Patty out of his "group" because she didn't get him a burger from his favorite restaurant even though she was off in another state and it would've gotten cold by the time it reached Kevin. At one point, he outright says that everything is up to him.
Crazy Jealous Guy: He once got Allison fired from a previous job as a paralegal when he sabotaged her married boss's car, convinced that they were having an affair. This is later inverted when she actually does have an affair with her married boss (Sam) and he's completely oblivious.
Deconstructed Character Archetype: Sort of. Of the boorish, lazy, and immature husband from many domestic sitcoms. Kevin is an example of how horrible it would be to actually be married to such a person and how flaws that would usually be played for laughs have a serious and damaging effect on people around him, especially his wife. Although it should be pointed that that unlike all of the other Dom Com husbands, Kevin lacks all the usual sympathetic qualities and tropes that come with the archetype, such as wit, rationality, genuine kindness and love for his wife, which makes Kevin a very toxic example of one.
Disproportionate Retribution: Kevin frequently employs this when he feels he's been wronged.
- Prior to the series, he once poured sugar into the gas tank of Allison's boss's car out of the mistaken belief that she and her boss were having an affair, resulting in her getting fired.
- In "Living the Dream", Patty mentions he got into a feud with a mailwoman and got her deported.
- In "New Tricks", he immediately declares war on his neighbors after he assumes, with zero evidence, that they have stolen a package from his porch; his payback escalates to setting their lawn on fire and hiding his own possessions in order to frame them for theft (and benefit from the insurance payout).
- In "Live Free or Die", when Allison goes on a road trip with Patty and ignores Kevin's calls, he calls the police and reports their car as stolen. He rationalizes it on the grounds that he thought Allison was kidnapped.
- His response to Patty not getting him a burger is to cut her out of his friend group, and he later calls her boyfriend and convinces him that Patty is untrustworthy, thus causing their break up. This incident is why Patty decides to join Allison's efforts to kill Kevin.
- When he's dethroned as the "Worcester Wild Dude" by a horse, he gets the reporter who wrote the article in the paper fired. Then he takes it a step further by leaving the horse's head on her windshield (it's a fake, but still).
The Ditz: Needless to say, Kevin is painfully ignorant and careless, and he's oblivious to how people are affected by his actions. Allison, Patty, Sam, Kurt, and Tammy all accurately refer to him as an idiot. He's slightly smarter than Neil, but that's not a high bar to clear.
Easily Forgiven: Averted. Allison's resentment of Kevin's antics has built up over the years, and the pain of his previous actions still stings.
Entitled Bastard: No matter how poorly he treats them, Kevin still expects everyone else to move heaven and earth for his own benefit and doesn't see an issue with such a mentality.
Everyone Has Standards: As horrible as he is, Kevin has some moments of this. One example is that even he's aware of how dangerous it is to have Neil around flammable objects, to the point where he's helped Patty keep fireworks away from him.
Evil Is Petty: He'll take things way too far and cause great harm to other people over the most trivial reasons, such as lighting his neighbors' lawn on fire when he believes they stole a package from him. He also temporarily freezes Patty out of his friend group, simply because he found out that she bought fast food and didn't get a burger for him.
Expy: A pointed Take That! at the titular sitcom husband of Kevin Can Wait (note the shared names/titles), being a loutish and emotionally neglectful husband to his long-suffering and much more mature wife. Perhaps most pointed in the finale when he thinks Allison is dead. Just like his inspiration, he makes a few passing references to grieving before immediately moving on with a new love interest and barely mentioning her for the rest of the episode. Eric Peterson himself has said he's also based his performance off Ralph Kramden and Peter Griffin.
Fat Bastard: Whereas he's Big Fun in the sitcom framing, the larger story paints him as something closer to this.
A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: Kevin is absolutely terrible with money and blows through his and Allison's finances on get-rich-quick schemes or his childish fixations. His mishandling of their finances is one of the reasons Allison can't simply leave him as she has no money and nowhere to go.
For the Evulz: At best, he's Innocently Insensitive; at worst, he actually is fully aware of how horrible he and his actions are but goes ahead anyway since he thinks it's funny.
Freudian Excuse: Kevin is the way he is in no small part due to Pete never providing him with real discipline or positive guidance and being a lousy role model in general. He's still an awful person, but it's not hard to see how he ended up as bad as he did.
Hate Sink: While Kevin, for the most part, doesn't necessarily go out of his way to hurt others with his behavior, he is still an incredibly lazy, selfish, and egotistical man who demands attention from everyone.
Hates Being Alone: The finale shows him start to panic when he's alone in a room, and as soon as Molly comes in, he tells her she's moving in with him.
Hidden Depths: For all his dickish behavior, when he thinks his house is being burgled he does not hesitate to protect his wife by confronting the intruder.
Hoist by His Own Petard: He tries to burn all of Allison's things in an act of petty revenge and ends up burning down the house, killing himself in the process.
Hopeless with Tech: Zigzagged. He can't get the Alexa to work (mostly because he mispronounces the word "Alexa"), but is able to install his own ringtone on Allison's phone, which she can't get rid of.
Humiliation Conga: Over the course of the second season, his former ironclad grasp on the narrative slowly starts to loosen, with more and more of his friends realizing what a toxic person he is and subsequently getting sicker of his shenanigans. By the end, his former best friend openly hates him, his father's cut all ties and his girlfriend has left him without even the dignity of an actual rejection. Notably, just before he's forced into the real world, his own studio audience turns against him, cheering for Allison when she says she's divorcing him.
Ignored Epiphany: In "Fixed", after shooting Nick to defend his home, he's pretty shaken up and even seems to be on the verge of some kind of breakthrough realization. Instead, he just goes back to his usual terrible ways and only gets worse from there.
Immune to Drugs: He can down a good deal of alcohol without suffering too many ill effects, with Patty recalling an incident where he once drank a pint of moonshine one night and woke up with nary a hangover the next morning. This high tolerance for strong substances makes Patty skeptical of the viability of Allison's plan to poison Kevin with oxy.
Informed Attractiveness: Sort of. Allison's aunt bizarrely considers Kevin "a catch" whom Allison could easily lose if she starts dressing down. Kevin, being a narcissist, also considers himself "the cutest thing in the house". To the audience, it's clear that this is really less anyone actually finding Kevin attractive and more putting down Allison.
Innocently Insensitive: This is probably the most charitable view of his behavior, that he seems genuinely oblivious to the destructive effect he has on other people. Deconstructed in that, unlike most examples, this doesn't redeem or soften him as he doesn't mean well nor does he have any positive traits to make up for it nor does he even apologize for anything, with his ignorance and narcissism making him an absolutely horrible husband to Allison and a horrible friend to Neil and Patty.
Insufferable Imbecile: He's incredibly stupid and is also an arrogant, self-serving jerk. Deconstructed, as Kevin's ignorance and selfishness make him intensely toxic to everyone around him, including Allison and his friends.
I Reject Your Reality: Kevin doesn't do well with anyone intruding on his self-image as a lovable goofball or anything which upsets his self-centered view of the world in general.
It's All About Me:
- Is completely oblivious to any of his wife's needs, or what she is going through. He makes their anniversary party a raging kegger, refuses to allow Allison to have a dog, and also categorically rejects the idea of having children because he doesn't want anything stealing focus from him (and only sort of warms up to the idea at one point out of a narcissistic view of his child being an extension of himself).
- His idea of an anniversary present for Allison was a trip for him and Neil to a football camp, rationalizing that Allison would appreciate some time alone.
Jerkass: Kevin is not actively malicious, but he still counts due to being an incredibly selfish individual who doesn't give a shit about his wife's feelings or needs, only how she can attend to his.
Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: A running gag of the sitcom segments of the show is that he will occasionally do something "nice" for Allison, only for him to reveal it's incredibly half-assed or done for a self-serving reason. One example is in the first episode, where he tries to surprise Allison with a classy anniversary "dinner" like she'd wanted (as a means of smoothing over how he went behind her back canceling their plans to move,) only for him to later happily express how he can't wait to eat whatever she makes.
Karma Houdini: He never suffers the consequences of his actions, even though some of these are potentially life-threatening. In the season 1 finale, it's revealed that he shot and nearly killed Nick, but he's hailed as a hero by the community. This is despite the fact that he did so with an unregistered gun. Allison screams in frustration when she realizes he's going to get away with it. However...
Karma Houdini Warranty: The latter half of Season 2 finally sees Kevin's actions catch up to him. After he crosses the line in a major way with each character, they eventually cut ties with him, culminating in Allison informing him that she hasn't loved him for years and wants to divorce him, which drives Kevin to burn her belongings as revenge, only to accidentally kill himself in the process.
Karmic Shunning: In Season 2, everyone gets sick of his toxic behavior and cuts him off, even including the audience of his sitcom delusion.
Knight of Cerebus: He's a weird inversion of this trope. Whenever he's on camera, the world around him looks like a sitcom. Whenever he's out of sight, though, the show becomes significantly more dramatic.
Kick the Dog: In addition to his mistreatment of Allison and his friends, he also gets a literal example of this when he gets a dog for one of his idiotic feuds and then gets rid of it casually even after Allison has become attached to it, without caring in the slightest how she would feel.
- In the Season 1 finale, Kevin sends Neil off on what he says is a big game of hide-and-seek after getting annoyed by Neil's childish whining during his campaign party, and then mocks Neil with his father behind Neil's back. Subsequent events with Allison show that Neil was hiding in the kitchen for over four hours without realizing the truth.
- In Season 2's "The Unreliable Narrator," he steals Lorraine's hearing aid and tries to pass it off as a prank, something that actually manages to unsettle Pete, who usually enables him. Later, he ends up shutting Pete's hand in a car door and doesn't even apologize for it.
Lack of Empathy: He's largely incapable of understanding or caring about the needs and feelings of his wife or his friends and only cares about himself.
Large Ham: His bombastic and dramatic tone sharply contrasts him with the more understated and realistic characterization seen outside his plot.
The Leader: Type 3. While he's hardly a moral, courageous, or even intelligent individual, it's his headstrong and domineering nature that makes him the head of his friend group, with disastrous consequences.
Lousy Lovers Are Losers: He's extremely selfish and insensitive, so unsurprisingly, he's terrible at sex.
Lower-Class Lout: He's a loud, rude, impulsive, arrogant, ignorant, childish, irresponsible, and overall insufferable loser from a working-class family. He lives in a run-down house and only cares about things like unhealthy food, drinking, and sports.
Made of Iron: Played for Drama. According to Patty, Kevin is "a tank", once downing a whole pint of moonshine on Christmas Eve and waking up bright and early for breakfast on Christmas morning. This trait is one of the reasons why Allison decides not to go through with spiking his burger.
Manchild: Selfish, immature, oblivious to the needs of others and still mentally in the frat boy zone. Kevin lives his life as if nothing else matters but him, to the point of having a scoreboard in his living room where he is beating life with a score of over 300 to 4, despite the fact that he lives in a run-down home and is constantly broke due to his reckless spending. Borders on Psychopathic Manchild as well, given how willing he is to ruin the lives of everyone around him whenever they wrong him in some way (and it's usually over something pretty minor).
Manipulative Bastard: Of a sort. A devious mastermind he ain't, but he is admittedly pretty adept at pulling off feats of low cunning, engaging in crude acts of manipulation like ruining other people's self-esteem and sabotaging their relationships to make them more dependent on him. Patty even calls him a "manipulative dick."
Money Dumb: Big time. Unlike a lot of examples of this, Kevin doesn't come from a rich background, but he's simply such an impulsive and reckless moron that he sees no problem with blowing his and Allison's savings on parties, sports memorabilia, and his idiotic scams. Meanwhile, he tries to gaslight Allison into thinking that their financial troubles are actually her fault.
Narcissist: He's a massive one. Kevin genuinely believes the world revolves around him and perceives the world around him as a sitcom where he's the main character. He's also extremely overconfident and self-absorbed while demanding everyone's devotion and attention while treating everyone around him terribly and expecting them to love him anyway and regularly showing no empathy for anyone else.
Never My Fault: Whenever something goes wrong in his life, Kevin will always blame someone else for his misfortune, even if they went along with something that he came up with himself.
Obfuscating Stupidity: To some extent. It's unclear exactly how much of his idiocy is genuine and how much is an act, but at least some of it is put on. He admits to knowingly playing up the "well-intentioned bumbler" demenour, and his actions in the finale show far more awareness of the consequences of his actions then he pretends.
Obliviously Evil: Kevin honestly seems to think of himself as a fun-loving, good-natured guy who everyone loves rather than the selfish, immature, controlling, toxic, and abusive bastard he really is. Right until the finale, where it turns out he's completely aware of what he's doing, and is an evil bastard to the core.
Obnoxious Entitled Housewife: A Gender-Inverted version of this trope, but Kevin basically represents this. He thinks the whole world literally revolves around him, acts entitled, and believes he owns everyone around him, including Allison, Neil, and Patty. He even punished and humiliated the latter for not bringing him a burger.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: He behaves bravely and unselfishly when he hears there is a home invader and tells Allison to stay in her bed while he confronts Nick. After he shoots Nick, he goes into a depressive state for a short period, in contrast to the energetic guy he was beforehand.
Pet the Dog: The sole instance of Kevin actually showing any care towards his wife is when he becomes legitimately protective of her when he believes a burglar is in their house.
Precision F-Strike: Normally, as befitting the sitcom motif, he never swears. In the Grand Finale, when the sitcom mask is taken off, Kevin swears twice - first when he threatens Allison and says that he'll "fucking destroy [her]" and second when he calls Neil a "fucking idiot".
Pyromaniac: While he paints Neil as being one, Kevin is actually the only person to set fires in the series, simply because he enjoys it, culminating in his death in the Grand Finale.
Sanity Slippage: Slowly goes through this in the finale, as everyone that cares about Kevin cuts off all ties with him, culminating in him accidentally burning his house down while drunk.
Selective Obliviousness: If anybody ever tries to call him out and tell him how horrible he is, he will choose to ignore it and only remember the positive word they used. For example, when Allison gives him "The Reason You Suck" Speech in the finale and calls him a "dick", Kevin decides to ignore what she called him and decided to call himself an "everyday hero" anyway.
Self-Disposing Villain: The show lives up to its own title quite well in the Grand Finale when he ultimately does himself in by burning Allison's belongings in a drunken fit of rage, setting the whole house on fire and killing himself in the process.
The Slacker: He's a lazy and unambitious deadbeat, and he only seems to care about alcohol, sports, food or one of his half-assed get-rich-quick schemes. He does have a job as a TV cable guy, but it's clear he doesn't take it seriously at all and does as little work as possible, even putting on a fake name badge to avoid customer complaints. In "Fixed", he admits to playing hooky from work while he's at the bar.
Small Name, Big Ego: Kevin thinks he is "winning" at life, despite all evidence to the contrary. Being enabled by everyone around him, who are often kowtowed into going along with his self-image, doesn't help with this perception.
The Sociopath: He is not only self-centered to a truly delusional degree but capable of casually committing serious harm to those he considers friends for the pettiest of reasons. And the Grand Finale shows that he is perfectly capable of being intentionally malicious whenever he believes his view of the world is being threatened.
Spanner in the Works: His bullheadedness makes him a steamroller over even many carefully laid out plans and his general idiocy makes him grate on the nerves of even the most put-together person, so Kevin can easily qualify as one. Allison even tries to weaponize it at one point.
Through the Eyes of Madness: Half of the show's main premise. Whenever he's on screen until Grand Finale, we see the world from his horribly warped and narcissistic perspective, which takes the form of a zany cheesy sitcom where the consequences of his terrible behavior are downplayed and portrayed comically.
Too Dumb to Live: Kevin's inane schemes don't just blow up in his face, but put him in real danger. His escape room plan in "Live Free or Die" causes him to swallow a key, which is clearly painful for him, and then get stuck in a window (and that's not getting to the roast beef that's been left burning in the oven). And in "The Grand Victorian", his antics on his birthday cause him to consume so much food that it threatens his health, to the point where he actually begins choking on a piece of meat and would have died if not for Sam's intervention. This sort of behavior contributes to Allison's Sanity Slippage since the show depicts how such behavior would be mentally and physically exhausting to put up with on a daily basis. It also implies that all the energy Allison spends on plotting Kevin's demise is actually wasted, because he is ultimately so helpless without her that if she ever got the courage to just leave him for good, it would in all likelihood not take very long for him to end up getting himself killed through his own stupidity. This ultimately comes into play in the series finale, as he accidentally burns down his house in a drunken attempt to get rid of Allison's belongings after Allison leaves Kevin for good, killing himself.
Too Funny to Be Evil: It seems that the reason he's able to get away with so much is that his behavior is so goofy and over-the-top that no one takes it seriously. This is Lampshaded at the end of "Live Free or Die" when Allison reminds Patty of a past Kevin stunt that Patty wrote off as "harmless" at the time, although it cost Allison a job she loved. It's obvious that she's not just talking to Patty but acknowledging the Comedic Sociopathy underlying years of television sitcoms.
Patty: Okay, fine, I never said he was a great guy. But that's the kind of juvenile crap he does.
Allison: Patty, he got me fired. Right when I felt like I was worth something. He ruined it. And you just watched him and laughed.
Toxic Friend Influence: Has this kind of effect on Neil and Patty. Patty ultimately wises up to it. Neil, not so much... at least until the second season.
Trademark Favorite Food: Top Dog burgers; it's Serious Business if you don't get him one while you're there... even if you're a state away and it'll be cold by the time he gets it.
Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Fitting with the sitcom deconstruction, Kevin is a shlub while Allison is generally much less so even during the times when she's looking worse for the wear.
The Unapologetic: At best, Kevin's generally oblivious to the destructive consequences of his antics; at worst, he's being deliberately malicious but plays stupid to get away with it. Anytime he's ever called out on his actions or behavior, he refuses to acknowledge or apologize for the harm he's caused and turns it back on others, acting like he's the victim.
Villainous Breakdown: In the Grand Finale, when Allison declares she's going to divorce him, he snaps into the real world and loses his mind, threatening and almost physically attacking her, before calling and verbally abusing his former friends and burning all her possessions (and himself) in a drunken rage.
Villainy-Free Villain: While Kevin isn't really evil, he's the primary source of Allison's misery for the past ten years and he has a clearly unhealthy influence on those around him. Subverted over the course of Season 2; as Kevin's grasp on the people around him starts to slip, so too does his mask, and his malice becomes more obvious and deliberate.
Villain with Good Publicity: Due to his Big Fun sitcom persona, a lot of people who don't really know him — the people in the bar, quite a few cops — do seem to like him. Season 2 takes this even further as he achieves viral fame and becomes known as the "Worcester Wild Dude".
Wrong Genre Savvy: The series revolves around Kevin believing himself to be the lead in a typical comedy about a boorish and immature but fundamentally lovable guy whose flaws are treated as endearing rather than a brutal deconstruction of said comedies and where he's an abusive jerk who treats everyone around him horribly.
Yandere: In the series finale, when Allison stands up to Kevin and declares she's divorcing him, Kevin flies off the handle and basically pulls out every underhanded trick in the book to intimidate her into staying with him and threatens to "destroy" her when she makes it clear she's not backing down from her decision.

Pete

Peter "Pete" McRoberts

Portrayed by: Brian Howe

Kevin's father, who frequently hangs out with his group of friends, and suffers from a variety of health problems.

Basement-Dweller: He secretly moves into Kevin and Allison's basement in Season 2, which he casually reveals after having been there for weeks.
Cool Old Guy: Subverted. He's less Kevin's father and more his pal, going along with whatever he wants... which isn't a good thing. It's clear that he has completely failed to raise his son properly, instead enabling his worst impulses and being complicit in his emotional abuse of his daughter-in-law.
December–December Romance: He starts dating a dance instructor named Lorraine at the midpoint of Season 2.
Drop-In Character: He constantly hangs out at his son's place.
Dude, Not Funny!: Pete finally gets fed up with Kevin's antics in Season 2's "The Unreliable Narrator," which include stealing and breaking Lorraine's hearing aid, causing a town-wide blackout, and crushing Pete's hand in a car door. He haltingly tries to make his son apologize, to no avail.
Everyone Has Standards:
- In "New Patty", when he and the others befriend Paddy after Kevin kicks Patty out of their group, Pete is the first one to realize that Paddy is unstable.
- Pete usually just goes along with his son's antics, but there are limits. In "Mrs. McRoberts Is Dead", Pete is visibly horrified by the sheer stupidity of Kevin's new campaign video.
- When he learns that Kevin both started the city-wide blackout and purposefully destroyed Lorraine's hearing aid (purely out of spite and amusement), he is horrified.
- After six months of waiting on Kevin hand and foot in his "grief" over Allison's death, Pete has finally had enough of his son taking advantage of him and decides to leave him and cut all ties.
Freudian Excuse: The creators of the series are blunt in describing him as the reason Kevin is the way he is. If he isn't responsible for Kevin turning out the way he is due to his terrible parenting, then he certainly failed to prevent it. He's also no prize as an individual either, being personally unpleasant, bigoted, and taking poor care of himself, making him a lousy role model. He's even been described as "Kevin in 30 years".^note Until he meets Lorraine, he doesn't seem to have any friends his own age and is forced to hang around his son and his friends to have any kind of social life at all. It should be noted that he's the only major character we never see outside of the sitcom filter, even though Neil and even Kevin break out of it eventually. In fact, the filter is on even in the few scenes he has where Kevin is not present, suggesting that, like Kevin and Allison's mother Donna, he generates his own.
Grumpy Old Man: Given to crotchety Deadpan Snarker asides.
Happy Ending: Of all people, Pete probably gets the best ending. He is the only character to end the series in a relationship (with Lorraine), he successfully leaves Worcester (for sunny Florida), and he escapes his son's toxic influence so cleanly that he doesn't even break the sitcom filter, leaving him the only character who ends the series never crossing over into the "drama" scenes. Pete, unlike Kevin, is savvy, self-reliant, and genuinely cares for his partner, suggesting that he'll also avoid his ultimate fate.
I Have No Son!: Downplayed — while Pete doesn't outright disown Kevin, he becomes more disgusted with his son's antics when they get worse, to the point that he ultimately leaves Worcester with Lorraine and is implied to be barely speaking to Kevin anymore in the series finale.
Karma Houdini: Pete, while not actively malignant like Kevin, is an unpleasant person in his own right and whose spectacular failure at parenting is largely responsible for the monster his son has become. Although he finally sees and acknowledges Kevin's darker side and even has to wait on him hand and foot for six months after Allison's "death", he still is able to exit his son's life to live with his girlfriend in a sunny Florida condo in so clean a getaway that his sitcom filter doesn't even break. We can only hope that his last several months seeing the worst of Kevin have encouraged him to be a better person to Lorraine than Kevin was to Allison.
Older and Wiser: While he isn't that much better than Kevin overall, Pete definitely has him beat in the common sense department.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: His horror at Kevin destroying Lorraine's hearing aid purely for his amusement has Pete become angry and serious enough to demand that Kevin apologize to Lorraine.
Outliving One's Offspring: Kevin dies in the finale while Pete is still alive.
Parental Sexuality Squick: He tells Kevin about how he got his mother pregnant in the bathtub, which heavily grosses Kevin out. He does it again while boasting about Lorraine still having her original hips.
Pushover Parents: Pete can definitely count, as he's enabled Kevin's terrible behaviors and generally has failed to raise his son properly. It's also deconstructed in an especially dark manner, showing that Pete's failure to provide Kevin with any discipline or structure has turned him into an irresponsible slacker and an abusive lout who has ruined multiple people's lives.
Racist Grandpa: While not a grandparent (as Kevin never wants kids), he's the oldest person in the cast and on a couple of occasions, he blames immigrants for a lot of the things he doesn't like.
Raised Catholic: It's implied that he used to be a priest, or at least studied for the priesthood, before starting a family. He is sometimes seen to be reading the Bible and impersonates a priest as part of Kevin's escape room scam. Season 2 not only confirms this to have been the case, it also reveals that Kevin's late mother was a nun.
Satellite Character: Pete is one to Kevin in reality, despite Neil being depicted as one in the "sitcom". We never see Pete outside of the sitcom filter and he has virtually no impact on any of the storylines in the "real world". In addition to his existence providing the Freudian Excuse for why Kevin is the way he is, his primary role within the narrative appears to be demonstrating that Kevin is such a corrosive character that he even alienates and drives away those who exist entirely within his own sitcom delusion.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: He moves to Florida with Lorraine in the series finale.
Your Days Are Numbered: He has a heart condition, with his doctors clarifying that a coronary event for him is not only possible, but "inevitable".

Donna

Donna Devine

Portrayed by: Peri Gilpin

Allison's mother.

Abusive Parents: She would constantly talk down to and emotionally abuse her daughter. She even did this during her husband's funeral!
Evil Matriarch: She's Allison's mother and was horrible and abusive to her.
Freudian Excuse: Not only does her abusive treatment of Allison explain how Allison wound up with Kevin in the first place (as Allison shacked up with him only a few months after they began dating just to get away from her mother's treatment), but it also explains a lot of Allison's own personality faults.
Like Parent, Like Spouse: She has many traits in common with Kevin, including her own "sitcom filter".
Small Role, Big Impact: She only shows up for one scene, and a flashback at that, but from what can be gleaned, it's clear just how much Donna's abuse of her daughter led to Allison's current situation. Without her, this entire show likely would have never happened.

Diane

Portrayed by: Jamie Denbo

Allison's aunt, boss, and the owner of the local liquor store.

Age-Gap Romance: She starts having an affair with Neil in Season 2, who is at least a decade younger than her.
The Alcoholic: Though on the road to recovery. She starts attending AA in Season 2, and by the end of the series is successfully six months sober.
Ascended Extra: While she made scattered appearances throughout the first season, Diane becomes a much bigger presence in the second season.
Broken Bird: She's even more broken than Allison is, thanks to being ground down by her bad experiences with obnoxious customers and putting up with her own abusive jerk of a husband for twenty years.
Conditioned to Accept Horror: It's implied that her cowing to male customers is based on previous bad experiences. She panics when Allison calls out a customer for being rude and even gives him a free bottle of alcohol to keep him from getting angry. It's later implied this is also partly Chuck's doing, as he has systematically demoralized and terrified her over the course of their marriage.
Domestic Abuse: It's made clear that her husband, Chuck, is at the very least incredibly emotionally abusive to her. She's both terrified of him and despises him. When she learns he has been cheating on her, she tries to flee to North Carolina, but he tracks her down and "reminded her what she was missing", causing her to return to Worcester.
Female Misogynist: In Season 1, she subscribes to the idea that women need to be pretty at all times to keep their men, even when it is uncomfortable or the men aren't present. She starts getting over this in Season 2.
Foil: The second season reveals her to have quite a lot in common with Allison — both are miserable women who've been abused by the men in their lives, but while Allison is trying to break free from it, Diane has more or less resigned herself to it all. As the story goes on, it's made clear that she is more of a Shadow Archetype to Allison.
Like a Daughter to Me: She admits that Allison is the closest thing she's ever had to one, as she's never had nor wanted her own kids.
"Ray of Hope" Ending: At the end of the series, she is still in her abusive marriage to Chuck, but she is six months sober and tells Neil that there is hope for them together as a couple if he does some hard work on himself. Also, Allison has returned to town and is now in a position to help her leave her marriage.
Shadow Archetype: She's what Allison could become if she stays in a relationship with someone like Kevin for another decade of her life.
Skewed Priorities: She insists on wearing heels while doing manual labor at the liquor store, despite the fact that they are both painful and impractical. She claims she does so to keep her husband interested, even though he doesn't work at the liquor store and is seldom seen.
Sympathetic Adulterer: She starts seeing Neil after "The Unreliable Narrator", and given what she's had to deal with from Chuck, it's hard to blame her.

The McRoberts' Friends

Patty

Patricia "Patty" Deirdre O'Connor

Portrayed by: Mary Hollis Inboden

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/patty_16.png

A local hairstylist who participates in Kevin's antics despite being frequently insulted and put down by him and the group.

Achievements in Ignorance: She became the main distributor of oxycodone in Worcester completely by accident and without realizing it, thinking she was just helping out a few people here and there. However, some of her clients were actually reselling the drugs without her knowledge, making her a much larger figure in the Worcester underworld than she thought.
Ambiguously Bi: She's initially involved with a man named Kurt, but begins to question her sexuality after Tammy falls for her. She comes to return Tammy's feelings, but her exact orientation isn't stated.
Big Damn Heroes: In the last minute of the first season, she comes running when she hears Allison cry out, and finds her brother attempting to strangle her. Patty grabs a bottle and hits him over the head with it, saving Allison's life.
Deadpan Snarker: In both Kevin's ideal sitcom world and the real world, though she's noticeably more deadpan in the latter.
Deuteragonist: Her story arc is almost on the same level as Allison's, as she herself is also trying to figure out her own life outside of her brother and Kevin's "sitcom" world.
Differing Priorities Breakup: With both Kurt and Tammy. Kurt wanted more out of their relationship and with his life in general; Tammy meanwhile wanted to leave Worcester altogether while Patty didn't want to uproot entirely.
Drop-In Character: Like her brother Neil, she spends much of her free time hanging around Kevin's house and participating in his Zany Schemes, despite the fact that she despises everybody involved.
Female Misogynist: She's a "one of the boys" type and has little sympathy or patience for whatever Allison is going through, despite knowing full well what type of man Kevin is. She also frequently makes snide comments about Allison's "girly-girl" personality type and interests. It's deconstructed in that not only does this not protect Patty from being mistreated by the guys as well, but Patty also inadvertently enabled Kevin's abuse of Allison because she didn't think it was that serious or harmful. When Allison forcibly opens her eyes to that fact, she's horrified with herself and starts making a genuine effort to treat Allison more kindly.
Foil: To Allison. While Allison keeps hoping for some big change that will make everything better, Patty is resigned to everything staying the same forever. Neither approach has led to much happiness—Allison's big change never comes, and Patty's resignation is poorly disguised despair.
Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Patty is the Responsible one to Neil's Foolish.
Friendly Neighborhood Gangster: Unintentionally. She started selling generic oxycodone from her pharmacist because she saw some of her hair salon clients being left behind by the healthcare system and wanted to help. However, some of her clients turned around and started selling them without her knowledge, while she continued to believe she was just helping a few old ladies.
Genre Savvy: Unlike Allison, she actually seems to realize that when she's not in the sitcom part of the show, she's in a crime drama. After figuring this out, she starts trying to help Allison carefully plan both Kevin's murder and, even more importantly, the aftermath.
Heel–Face Turn: Starts off as the token woman in Kevin's friend group, all of whom regard Allison with little more than aloof disdain. However, after seeing for herself how toxic Kevin truly is (notably when she finds out he called the police to report his car stolen when he knew Allison had borrowed it, just because she wasn't answering her phone), she disavows him as her friend and becomes a genuine friend and support system for Allison.
Hypocrite: Suggests to Allison that her new relationship with Tammy could work to their advantage. Later on, she gets very upset with Allison for suggesting that she take advantage of her relationship to read Tammy's notebook — although this could be excused by her having developed feelings for Tammy in the interim.
I Just Want to Have Friends: It's implied she only indulges in the group's antics because she is lonely and has nothing else to do.
It Amused Me: She doesn't really care for Kevin's group, but finds their shenanigans entertaining. This leads to a My God, What Have I Done? moment for her at the end of "Live Free or Die" when Allison calls her out for failing to consider the destructive repercussions of Kevin's immature behavior and enabling his abuse.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Though apathetic and insensitive at first, she comes to care about Allison as the series progresses.
The Lad-ette: She serves the function of The Big Guy in Kevin's otherwise all-male group, and after kicking her out, they struggle to get respect at their local dive without their "enforcer" present. Kevin refers to her as a "half-chick."
Letting Her Hair Down: When she slowly leaves Kevin's group and finds her own identity, her hair becomes much natural and wavier when she lets them down and even becomes bare-faced as well with minimal makeup and more sophisticated and mature clothing, showing how much she has grown and how mature and wise she is.
The Lancer: To Allison. Also borders on The Smart Guy as well.
Living Emotional Crutch: She's been this for most people, including her brother, Allison, and Kevin.
The Mole: She becomes this for Allison in order to infiltrate Kevin's group and keeps up with her facade whenever she is around them.
Morality Pet: She becomes this for Allison.
One of the Boys: She acts this part to a T in Kevin's group, even—as it turns out—when she's not really feeling it. Notably, she's spent most of the last ten years in Allison's living room, but has only recently begun to get to know her.
Only Friend: To Allison after they forge a genuine connection, and to an extent, Allison is this for her also.
Only Sane by Comparison: She certainly has issues of her own, and is also planning on murdering Kevin. But given she mostly interacts with Allison, Kevin, Neil and Nick, she more or less becomes the voice of reason by default.
Only Sane Woman: Between the antics of her brother and Kevin getting crazier and crazier and Allison becoming obsessed with killing Kevin which results in her making bad decisions, Patty ends up filling in this role, especially for Allison when she has to keep on pointing out the consequences of her decisions.
Promotion to Parent: After their mother died, Patty had to take over caring for Neil, who is her older brother. She even changed his diapers.
Sad Clown: She's all but resigned herself to being stuck in Worcester with her dumb manchild brother and his equally idiotic jerk of a friend, only participating in the group's antics because she's bored and coping with her boredom.
Single Woman Seeks Good Woman: She starts liking and dating Tammy due to how nice and understanding she is to her.
The Snark Knight: She's disdainful of everyone and everything around her, but also holds a bit of self-contempt due to her own resignation from being stuck in the drudgery of Worcester. It's deconstructed in that it's clear Patty's miserable, only participates in Kevin's shenanigans because they're funny, and failed to consider their destructive consequences in addition to contributing to the abusive and toxic environment Allison's put up with for the last ten years.
Stepford Snarker: She's revealed to be as unhappy as Allison is but unlike Allison, Patty doesn't hope for a better life.
The Stoic: Outside of Kevin's sitcom view of things, she's very stone-faced.
Tsundere: Of the Type A variety. At first, she seems a bit cold, distant and aloof, but later shows off her softer and vulnerable side when she gets close to Allison.
The Watson: Becomes this to Allison.
What the Hell, Hero?: She's not afraid to call Allison out on her worst behavior. Patty herself is on the receiving end from Allison in "Live Free or Die" for essentially turning a blind eye to Kevin's toxic behaviors and the destructive consequences of his antics by treating it all as harmless and silly fun.
Patty: Okay, fine, I never said he was a great guy. But that's the kind of juvenile crap he does.
Allison: Patty, he got me fired. Right when I felt like I was worth something, he ruined it. And you just watched him and laughed. Can you just think about that for more than one second? He didn't like something that was my own, and so he took it away from me. Like this car. Like my friends. Like any shred of a life that is my own.
Patty: I-It... It seemed... harmless.
When She Smiles: Later in the series, she smiles and laughs when she is around Allison or Tammy.

Neil

Neil O'Connor

Portrayed by: Alex Bonifer

Patty's moronic brother and Kevin's best friend, who seems to slightly worship Kevin and frequently backs him up on his zany schemes.

Age-Gap Romance: In Season 2, he begins an affair with Diane, who is at least a decade his senior.
The Alcoholic: While most of the characters drink heavily, he becomes both violent and self-destructive while drinking, which gets worse in Season 2.
Beware the Silly Ones: He may be a moron, but he's very tall and quite strong, with a violent streak that is exacerbated by his alcoholism. In the first season finale, he overhears Allison's plans to murder Kevin, and records it on his phone. When Allison attacks him to get the phone and erase the recording, he starts to strangle her and he could have easily killed her had Patty not intervened and broken a bottle over his head.
Bumbling Sidekick: He's this to Kevin. Deconstructed, as it's shown Neil is very dependent on Kevin and too oblivious to realize how little his so-called best friend really cares for him until he's forced to confront the truth.
But Now I Must Go: Implied: When Patty makes it back to Kevin's house to see it burning down, Neil walks past her with his duffel bag. After pausing to see the fire, he shares one more look with Patty before continuing down the road.
Butt-Monkey: While it's not as obvious as it is with Allison, it's clear Neil is frequently a victim of Kevin's antics, which sometimes involve Neil getting physically injured or humiliated. Neil is too clueless and blindly loyal to Kevin to ever realize it, though. For example, "We're Selling Washing Machines" reveals at one point, he tried to help Kevin hang a giant banner advertising a Kevin Hart stand-up show on his house, resulting in Neil breaking a leg. A throwaway line in a later episode implies Kevin may have cut off one of Neil's toes.
Cassandra Truth: During Season 2, Neil tries multiple times to tell someone that Allison tried to kill Kevin, including Kevin himself. No one believed him.
Character Development: In Season 2, after Allison forces him to see just how manipulative and cruel Kevin is to both of them, he starts slowly reevaluating his life choices.
Character Tic: Following his concussing, he starts rubbing the top of his head with both hands whenever becoming stressed.
Dark and Troubled Past: In "Live Free or Die", it's revealed that his and Patty's mother died when they were kids and that Neil was the one who found her body. At one point, Patty also implies their father might have been abusive.
Desperately Craves Affection: All he generally wants is Kevin's (very conditional) approval, and is willing to do anything to get it. Even attempting to kill Allison.
Did Not Get the Girl: A more bittersweet example — while his affair with Diane doesn't end with them officially getting together, she does encourage him to get his life together for his own sake and things close off on the suggestion that they could give it another shot once he does.
The Ditz: Extremely clueless and childlike. Zig-Zagged, as of the Season 1 finale and the Season 2 premiere, the latter of which reveals that Neil isn't quite as oblivious to everything as he appears, and in fact, plays up being a dimwit around Kevin and others.
Does Not Know His Own Strength: This phrase was apparently written on all of his childhood report cards, and in season 2, he cites this as his excuse for choking Allison.
Drop-In Character: He's a constant fixture in the McRoberts house. When Allison brings Kevin breakfast, he complains that she's "not supposed to have favorites."
Dumb Muscle: He's not particularly bright and is a very big and strong guy, even being able to lift up Kevin when giving the latter a Bear Hug.
Earn Your Happy Ending: Or at least he's halfway to it — in the Grand Finale, he finally breaks off his toxic one-sided friendship with Kevin, starts forging his own independent identity, and takes the first steps towards getting his life together.
Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Neil's the Foolish sibling while Patty is the responsible one.
The Friend Nobody Likes: Even Kevin, his supposed best friend, sometimes gets fed up with him, as evidenced in "Fixed" when Kevin pretends to start a game of "ultimate hide-and-seek" just so he can get Neil to go away for several hours. Once Neil's gone, Kevin and Pete wonder why they hadn't thought of doing that ten years ago.
Hidden Depths: He's still immature and a bit dim, but the second season reveals he's a lot more perceptive than he's given credit for, and he's ultimately not a bad guy so much as he just really needed a push in a better direction and the finale shows him finally trying to mature and lead a better life.
- It's revealed in "The Problem" that he enjoys playing Keno.
Important Haircut: Not one he chose for himself, but in the second episode of Season 2, he gets his long shaggy hair shorn down to a buzzcut when he has to get the bloody head wound caused by Patty hitting him with a beer bottle stapled up at the hospital. It also counts as an Expository Hairstyle Change, as this also marks the beginning of his arc where he finds a life for himself beyond being Kevin's doofus sidekick.
Jerkass Has a Point: Though he's using the information to manipulate Patty, Neil is correct about her codependent relationship with Allison, citing a similar relationship she had in high school.
Manchild: To the point that it's hard to believe that he's Patty's older brother instead of the other way around, acting like a 10-year-old most of the time. What separates Neil from Kevin, though, is that in Neil's case, it's largely naïveté (and possible mental health problems) rather than pure insensitivity and obliviousness.
Obfuscating Stupidity: Downplayed — while he's still not the sharpest knife in the drawer, the second season reveals that he's actually a lot more insightful than he initially appears and Patty notes that Neil plays up being a doofus so everyone can give him a free pass and bail him out of trouble.
Pyromaniac: An Informed Flaw. According to Kevin, Neil really wants to light stuff on fire sometimes; however, there is no point where this is actually shown to be the case, as Kevin is the one who started all of the fires in the series. Then again, it's still not a good idea to have someone as reckless and dimwitted as Neil around easily flammable objects, as Kevin, Pete, and Patty have made various efforts to keep Neil away from fireworks in the past.
Removing the Rival: He attempts to do this to Allison in the season 1 finale before Patty saves her from his wrath.
Sanity Slippage: Over the course of Season 2, his behavior gets increasingly erratic and sometimes outright dangerous, between his trauma over being attacked by his sister, the slow realization of how little his "best friend" actually cares about him and a growing alcohol problem. Interestingly, this actually seems to have ultimately helped him by the season finale, forcing him to break out of the stagnation his life was in.
Skewed Priorities: After overhearing Allison talking about killing Kevin, he is more concerned about using the info to get back in Kevin's good graces than the fact that Allison is planning murder. This means that even if Allison wanting to kill Kevin was just a wish she didn't mean, he was willing to spread rumors about her and make her The Scapegoat in order to make himself the hero for Kevin.
Start of Darkness: Averted. The events of "Fixed" appeared to be setting him up to be a thorn in Allison's side. However, he instead takes the incident as an opportunity to become more introspective.
Tap on the Head: Averted. After being whacked on the head with a tea kettle at the beginning of season 2, Neil continues to suffer adverse physical and mental effects, including (but not limited to) insomnia. The viewer is also treated to a look at his nasty-looking scar, which also shows that the wound was severe enough to require staples.
Walking the Earth: Implied. The Grand Finale has Patty finally kick him out, and he breaks off his toxic friendship with Kevin. When Diane rejects him until he's gotten his life together, he takes a duffle bag and walks off to parts unknown after sharing a final glance with Patty.
Yes-Man: He's Kevin's best friend and biggest supporter, constantly enabling him in his stupid schemes and hazing Allison and Patty on his command. At least until he wises up to how bad Kevin is.

Sam

Samuel "Sam" Park

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sam_63.png

Portrayed by: Raymond Lee

A former classmate and coworker of Allison's, with who she shared a brief fling while in high school. A recovering alcoholic, he recently moved back to Worcester from California, with his wife Jenn, to pursue his dreams of owning a restaurant. His diner, "Bev's", aims to be slightly classier than the greasy spoons that are more common in the town.

Awful Wedded Life: While Sam's marriage is not as harmful compared to the McRoberts', his marriage to Jenn is very unhappy, and he is open to both cheating and leaving his wife. He doesn't get the chance, as Jenn is the one to leave him.
The Alcoholic: He's a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Allison attends a meeting celebrating his eighth year of sobriety.
Asian and Nerdy: Downplayed because he isn't a stereotypical nerd and is a more non-academic example, but in a world where most of the men are dumbasses, he is the only one who is intelligent and good with economics.
Character Development: In Season 2 he starts making efforts to correct some of his more toxic behaviors. It doesn't save his marriage to Jenn, but he does become more empathetic, and a genuine friend to Allison and to Patty.
Debt Detester: His in-laws have helped finance his and Jenn's current lifestyle, including their house and the initial starter loan needed to start "Bev's". He deeply resents this, especially because they love to rub it in his face, and his resentment has greatly impacted his marriage to Jenn.
Loving a Shadow: He has a problem with still seeing Allison as she was when they knew each other in high school, not as she is in the present, as noted by the fact that he still calls her "Ally", like he did then. When the reality that she has changed is shown to him on several occasions, he usually doesn't take it well.
- Patty calls him on this in the Grand Finale, and he actually acknowledges it and begins trying to move on.
The Man Behind the Woman: His diner is named "Bev's", and has an attractive woman as a mascot, implying such a woman owns the restaurant. Bev is actually an Invented Individual, and Sam is both the owner and running the kitchen. He claims this is because the Worcester residents feel more comfortable with a white female cook, rather than an Asian-American man.
My God, What Have I Done?: When Kevin starts trying to "save" his marriage by teaching him how to be a "good" husband, he starts to realize just how much like Kevin he has been acting, both to Jenn and to Allison. Thereafter he makes a legitimate effort to start changing his ways.
Old Flame: He and Allison have been attracted to each other since high school and, while they never officially dated, they used to "fool around" behind the back of his then-girlfriend and now-wife, Jenn.

Other Characters

Kurt

Portrayed by: Sean Clements

Patty's milquetoast boyfriend of three years. He works at the local pharmacy where Patty gets her pills.

Didn't Think This Through: In "We're Selling Washing Machines", he proposes to Patty shortly after the police raid Terrance's pharmacy. After seeing she's not on board with it in "New Patty", Kurt realizes that it was an impulsive heat-of-the-moment decision and he'd be making a mistake getting married to her, as they want different things out of life and he ultimately doesn't know her that well even after dating her for three years.
Differing Priorities Breakup: He breaks up with Patty because he's tired of feeling like he's stuck in a rut while Patty's fine with everything just staying the same.
Dogged Nice Guy: He's this even when he's technically dating Patty. Patty finds him boring at best and annoying at worst.
Extreme Doormat: He's a slightly more downplayed example. He's not a confrontational or aggressive person at all, but he is capable of standing up for himself when need be.
Forgettable Character: Patty at one point legitimately forgets that he proposed to her the previous day.
The Generic Guy: He's as milquetoast as it gets.
Hidden Depths: He's a dork, but he's observant enough to see that Kevin is a complete idiot and notes that he's been telling Patty that for years. He also displays some fortitude in standing by his decision to break up with her.
Nice Guy: For what it's worth, he's a friendly guy and seems to mean well.
Ridiculously Average Guy: Combined with Unlucky Everydude. He's thoroughly unremarkable and generally, things don't go right for him.

Nick

Portrayed by: Robin Lord Taylor

A local ex-con who works as a busboy and moonlights as a drug dealer.

Ambiguous Criminal History: There are rumors in Worcester that he's out on parole for murdering his uncle. He uses the rumor to make himself more intimidating during drug deals, and Patty decides to recruit him as a hitman because he seems to have experience with murder. The actual facts of his history are left ambiguous.
Asshole Victim: It says something when his own aunt doesn't have a kind word to say about him getting shot and rendered comatose, even saying that he had it coming.
Convenient Coma: After getting shot by Kevin.
Death in the Limelight: While not apparent at the time, his final scene briefly shows his day-to-day struggles before he's shot by Kevin. He spends all of Season 2 in a coma until Tammy reveals that he died during the season finale.
Early-Bird Cameo: He makes a brief appearance in the first episode at the liquor store when Allison enters.
Hair-Trigger Temper: He slowly proves to be impulsive and violent, to the detriment of his personal life. It culminates in him assaulting a coworker and getting his parole put at risk.
The Man Behind the Woman: He's actually a major figure in the Oxy dealing scene in Worcester, and the main drug dealer behind Patty's side hustle of dealing pills from her salon. However, Patty didn't actually realize this until he informed her.
Not Quite Dead: Shortly after he's shot by Kevin, Patty and Allison are informed that he was removed from life support. They later find out that he survived this, although he remains in a critical condition. Season 2 reveals he is in a coma, and not expected to recover. He ultimatly dies off-screen, according to Tammy.
Professional Killer: Patty and Allison try to recruit him as one. He's fairly easily convinced. His attempt to kill Kevin quickly goes south, though, as he had no idea that Kevin had a gun (and nor, to be fair, did Allison until just before he used it, so there was no way she could have warned Nick).
Villains Out Shopping: Allison spots him while at a fancy restaurant with Kevin, and assumes he's there to fulfill his promise to murder Kevin, ahead of schedule. Turns out his presence is entirely coincidental — he works there as a busboy.

Tammy

Detective Tammy Ridgeway

Portrayed by: Candice Coke

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tammy_4.png

A Worcester police detective investigating the local Oxycodone drug ring.

Brutal Honesty: She's not afraid to speak her mind, though it's also a problem for her as well.
Butch Lesbian: She's a soft butch, but definitely less feminine presenting than Patty (who's also a tomboy herself).
By-the-Book Cop: She seems to follow procedure fairly to the letter, and doesn't go off script. However, despite this, she is actually fairly chill in her personal life.
- Dirty Cop: Although not by choice. She admits that she's forged evidence for her partner because she didn't feel safe denying him.
Deadpan Snarker: She keeps a dry tone throughout and can easily match barbs with Patty.
Fair Cop: She is quite attractive.
Genre Refugee: Whenever she appears in the sitcom segments of the show, she tends to stick out like a sore thumb and generally reacts to Kevin, Neil, and Pete's immature and idiotic behaviors with teeth-clenched exasperation.
Green-Eyed Monster: While she tries to hide it, it becomes clear that Patty's close friendship with Allison is the main reason why Tammy does not like her.
I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: She ultimately pulls this for Patty, recognizing that she won't be able to make her completely happy.
Jerkass Has a Point: She's not technically wrong when she thinks Allison is hiding something, or that her friendship with Patty sometimes causes problems for Patty. However, since she doesn't know the whole story, this causes her to treat Allison rudely and try to stop Allison and Patty from hanging out.
Manipulative Bastard: As the series goes on, it becomes more clear that her relationship with Patty is subtly manipulative, as she is gradually revealed to be psychologically domineering.
Pet the Dog: While she's cold at best and outright vicious at worst to Allison, when she finds out Allison faked her own death, Tammy agrees not to tell anyone, as it would only make things more complicated for everyone. She also tells Allison that she's not a bad person for cheating on Kevin, whom Tammy herself agrees is annoying and insufferable.
Somebody Doesn't Love Raymond: Played with and deconstructed. While she can sympathize with Allison's unhappy marriage, even sharing a genuine heart-to-heart over it, she vocally admits she doesn't like Allison and privately calls her pathetic in her notes. She even gently tells Allison that it's alright that they don't like each other, fitting the sitcom trope. However, her dislike also pushes her to cruelly get Allison out of Patty's life, making her dislike come off as controlling and aggressive.

Bob

Detective Bob Bram

Portrayed by: Kevin Chapman

Tammy's partner in investigating the Oxy ring.

Asshole Victim: Tammy remarks that no one at his funeral was mourning him except for his two sisters, who in her words, are "as horrible as he was."
Dirty Cop: Tammy reveals he's assaulted innocents and forced her to plant evidence on his behalf.
Jerkass: Season 2 reveals he had moments of cruelty and misogyny. Tammy even describes him as being pretty similar to Kevin.
Killed Offscreen: He dies between Season 1 and 2, with the audience only learning when Tammy attends his funeral.
Out of Focus: Not much is shown of him besides him generally having Tammy's back and seeming to be reasonably good at his job.
Politically Incorrect Villain: Tammy heavily implies he was a massive bigot.
Patty: "Uh, he was your partner."
Tammy: "Yes. He was from Charlestown, and I was his gay black lady partner."
Patty: "Oh."
Tammy: "Guess how that went?"
Undignified Death: While the cause of death isn't said, Tammy mentions he died while on the toilet.

Marcus

Portrayed by: Justin Grace

A mechanic at a local garage who occasionally dabbles in dealing cocaine.

Dirty Coward: When he gets picked up by the cops, he sells out Patty's drug supplier to save his own sorry ass.
Friend in the Black Market: Subverted. Allison tries to use him as such, but he's such a lowlife scumbag that he tries to screw her over for laughs.
Hate Sink: He's an all-around asshole who catcalls Allison, and after she slapped him, he set her up as a prostitute to a client as a sick joke.
Jerkass: He's an unpleasant misogynist, and usually a dick.
Put on a Bus: Cop car, rather. His last scene takes place in "We're Selling Washing Machines" and he isn't seen or heard from since.

Jenn

Portrayed by: Meghan Leathers

Sam's wife and former high school girlfriend.

Awful Wedded Life: Her and Sam's marriage is in dire straits due to Sam's resentment of her parents' meddling in their lives. Her own parents' marriage is described as being miserable too.
Innocently Insensitive: She really does try to be nice to Allison when they meet, but she makes several insensitive comments without realizing it.
Love Forgives All but Lust: Most of her and Sam's marital issues were external, though their individual personality problems didn't help the situation and she did want to work on things. Finding out that Sam had been cheating on her with Allison both while they were dating and married proves to be The Last Straw for her, however.
Spell My Name With An S: It's "Jenn", rather than the more common "Jen". Allison points out how strange this is when reminiscing about meeting her in high school.
Stepford Smiler: For all that she projects a peppy persona and a happy marriage in public, she's really deeply miserable and her marriage is slowly falling apart.
What Happened to the Mouse?: Jenn's exact fate isn't disclosed in the Grand Finale, other than that it's all but stated she and Sam divorced.

Lorraine

Portrayed by: Lauren Weedman

A dance instructor for senior citizens who Pete starts dating.

Annoying Laugh: She has a rather unique cackle. Diane describes it as sounding like the pained cries of a dying animal and Allison, upon hearing it for the first time, asks if a demon just achieved its final form in the kitchen.
Morality Pet: To Pete. For the first time in his life, he stands up to his son after Kevin does something to hurt her.
Nice Girl: Grating laugh aside, she's very friendly to the other characters and seems to be a good girlfriend to Pete.
Oblivious to Hatred: Kevin despises her but Lorraine barely even notices.
Parent with New Paramour: She's the new paramour. Kevin is annoyed with her to the point that he tries to break her and Pete up.
Satellite Character: To Pete, so much so that she never appears in the "real world" segments. On multiple occasions, she is left behind in a room when the other sitcom characters leave and the filter disappears... but then so does she, always just offscreen (and silent, despite her grating laugh being her most prominent trait).

Molly (SPOILER HEAVY)

Portrayed by: Erinn Hayes

Kevin's new girlfriend after Allison's "death".

Casting Gag: Erinn Hayes previously played Donna, the wife from Kevin Can Wait, whose unceremonious offscreen death between its first and second seasons provided the inspiration for this very series.
Genre Refugee: Of a sort. She clearly doesn't fit with Kevin's sitcom reality even before her talk with Allison, and generally reacts to his dangerous and idiotic antics just like a normal person would.
I Need to Go Iron My Dog: She leaves Kevin by telling him she's going to grab cigarettes. Even Kevin notes how lame an excuse that is.
Last Episode, New Character: She only appears in the series finale.
On the Rebound: Kevin began dating her two months after Allison's disappearance.
Replacement Goldfish: It's pretty obvious that Kevin is only dating her so that he can have a new female paramour to cook for him and take care of him in Allison's place. He even mixes them up at one point and misattributes one of Allison's past actions to Molly.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Once she is fully aware of how awful Kevin is thanks to Allison, she takes the first chance she can get to leave him.
What Happened to the Mouse?: After she leaves to "get cigarettes", her fate is never clarified.

Characters / Kevin Can F**k Himself

Characters

The McRoberts Family

Allison McRoberts (née Devine)

Kevin McRoberts

Peter "Pete" McRoberts

Donna Devine

Diane

The McRoberts' Friends

Patricia "Patty" Deirdre O'Connor

Neil O'Connor

Samuel "Sam" Park

Other Characters

Kurt

Nick

Detective Tammy Ridgeway

Detective Bob Bram

Marcus

Jenn

Lorraine

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Characters / Kevin Can F**k Himself

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Characters

The McRoberts Family

Allison McRoberts (née Devine)

Kevin McRoberts

Peter "Pete" McRoberts

Donna Devine

Diane

The McRoberts' Friends

Patricia "Patty" Deirdre O'Connor

Neil O'Connor

Samuel "Sam" Park

Other Characters

Kurt

Nick

Detective Tammy Ridgeway

Detective Bob Bram

Marcus

Jenn

Lorraine

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Index

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